- Home
- Knowledge library
- Low cost synthesis and evaluation of polymers prepared from oilseed rape and Euphorbia Lagascae oils
Low cost synthesis and evaluation of polymers prepared from oilseed rape and Euphorbia Lagascae oils
Summary
Downloads
pros-47-final-project-reportAbout this project
Abstract
The high environmental burden caused by the use of non-renewable petrochemical-based feedstocks for the chemical and polymer industries has led to the search for vegetable oil-based alternatives. Despite this, only castor oil (a non-UK indigenous crop), has gained importance as a feedstock in the polyurethane industry. Polyurethanes are used globally on a scale of around 7 million tonnes a year and this is rising at a rate of about 1 million tonnes a year.
The main aims of this project were thus to widen industrial demand for agricultural oilseed derived products from UK sources, primarily by demonstrating that oils such as rapeseed can be used as chemical feedstocks to make polyurethanes and replace existing petrochemicals and castor oil. However, oils such as rapeseed do not contain the necessary chemical functionality (hydroxyl groups) required to be useful as polyurethane feedstocks and so it is necessary to introduce such functionality by low-cost chemical manipulation.
Related research projects
- Environmental and nutritional benefits of bioethanol co-products (ENBBIO)
- Agronomic, economic and environmental analysis of dual-purpose wheat cultivars for bioenergy (PhD)
- Wheat straw for biofuel production (PhD)
- The nutritional value of biofuel co-products for poultry (PhD)
- Inorganic polymer bio-composites
- Feasibility of lactic acid production from cereal milling residues in the UK
- Reducing the carbon footprint of the lubricants industry by the substitution of mineral oil with rapeseed oil
- Straw incorporation review
- The use of glycerol in diets for broilers (PhD)
- Understanding and predicting alcohol yield from wheat (PhD)